He was semi-conscious as he watched the walls collapse around him. And then he saw the dark gray form of Jack Locke’s F-15 flash past, barely clearing the top of the prison. A firebrand of hate burned through him, leaving a raw urge to kill the Americans. Jack’s bomb exploded, and again a shock wave pounded at him, this time driving him into unconsciousness.
The two dull booms echoed across the valley of Kermanshah and the young goatherd turned in his tracks, ten feet short of the gully where Kamigami and Jamison were hidden. Like most twelve-year-olds the boy wandered around in a daydream of heroics and fancies. Now he looked puzzled by the sudden intrusion of reality into his perfect world. He stared at the smoke billowing up from the southern edge of the town, fixing its location. And he watched transfixed as Locke’s F-15 ran onto the prison and pulled up. For a moment he was in the cockpit, guiding the fighter into combat, killing the American enemies he had heard about on TV and the radio.
Then the explosion of the third bomb reverberated through the valley and he knew what it meant. Hated Americans were attacking the prison and bombing the walls. He ran back to his family’s compound, away from the death that waited for him ten feet away. He stopped in mid-flight and turned back to gather the goats, then thought better of it, turned again and ran for home …
Kamigami waited until he could no longer hear the boy’s retreating footsteps, then raised his head over the edge of the shallow ravine, keeping in the shadow of the rock, and made sure they were alone. He returned his knife to its sheath and picked up his M-203, an M-16 rifle with a 40mm grenade-launcher grafted to the underside of its barrel. “Would you actually have …?” Jamison’s voice trailed off at the thought.
The sergeant pulled his helmet’s chin-strap tight, said nothing. He only pointed down the gully and moved out.
Beasely inched the flaps down as he slowed to 160 knots. The nose came up as he turned the AC-130 into a stabilized gun platform orbiting the prison. “Both IR and TV’s got a target,” the sensor operator in the booth on the cargo deck told them.
The fire control officer bounced out of his seat and looked over the copilot, gauging the target area’s visibility. He squeezed back into his seat next to the navigator. “Take IR guidance,” he said, “smoke and dust might cause a problem.” He punched at the buttons on his fire-control panel and linked the infrared image with the fire-control computer.
“I count three guard towers,” the copilot said. “Tower by the admin building is down. No movement in the compound. Everybody must still be groveling in the dirt.”
“Rog,” Beasely said, “we’ll take out the front tower first, then the two at the rear. Give me the forties.” The FOCO worked his fire control panel and linked the pilot’s trigger to the two 40mm Bofors Automatic guns that stuck their ugly snouts out of the fuselage behind the left main-gear fairing. The sensor operator in the booth drove the crosshairs on his infrared viewer over the tower, illuminating it with that sensor. When he activated the system a diamond appeared on the IR viewer, bracketing the target. The same diamond appeared on the pilot’s HUD.
“Forties are ready,” the loader in the rear called.
The copilot maintained their altityde and airspeed while Beasely flew the yoke for bank. It took a carefully synchronized routine in crew coordination to bring the awesome fire power of the gunship to bear. Beasely turned his head and sighted through the HUD mounted beside the left cockpit window. He jockeyed the yoke and rudders to position the lighted circle on the HUD inside the diamond that bracketed the tower. The circle showed where any round he fired would impact. He mashed the trigger and sent a short burst of high explosive 40mm toward the guard tower. The burst lasted less than two seconds as eight rounds smashed into the structure, shredding it.
Beasely now worked his rudder pedals and slipped the gunship into a turn over the next tower. He could see a guard waving something at him. Again, he mashed the trigger and ripped the head of the tower off. “I think maybe he was trying to surrender,” he muttered, then moved over the third remaining tower.
The illuminator operator, the fancy term the Air Force chose to give the sergeant in charge of operating the searchlight mounted in the tail section of the cargo deck, was doing his most important job — lying down on the ramp. His parachute was off and a cable snapped onto his harness to hold him in the airplane as he stuck the upper third of his body over the edge of the ramp. He was checking their six o’clock position and he was cold. “Ground fire from the tower,” he yelled into his mike.
Beasely stomped on his right rudder pedal to skid the Hercules, then jerked it further to the right. No gunship commander in his right mind ignored a warning from the IO. “Type,” he barked.
“Small arms only,” the IO told him. “The Rangers are running for the wall.”
“Gimme the one-oh-five,” Beasely commanded. The fire routine repeated itself as he repositioned the gunship into a new firing orbit. When he hit the trigger button this time the crew felt a dull thump as the C-130 absorbed the recoil from the 105mm cannon mounted in the left paratroop door. The tower flashed into a ball of fire. When the smoke and debris cleared, there was … nothing.
The gunship flew an orbit around the prison, letting General Mado and Thunder scan it with binoculars. “The first C-130 is over the airfield,” Beasely told them. “Shall I clear the escorting F-15s back to the tanker?” Mado hesitated, and only after Thunder told him that was part of the plan did he give his okay. Beasely turned to the north. “Time to head for the holding pattern and get out of the way.” He had decided to start telling the general what he was doing rather than wait for directions.
Thunder watched Duck Mallard’s C-130 pass down the airfield two-and-a-half miles to the east. And Mado, that intrepid warrior, was on the SatCom with an update for the command center in the Pentagon.
CHAPTER 47
The first four-man team of Rangers was against the wall. Smoke and dust were still swirling out of the huge holes the bombs had opened up. The buck sergeant leading them only hesitated long enough to check his back up. Three more teams were behind him, running across the open area in front of the prison. Captain Trimler and his radio operator were coming out of the ditch, running as hard as they — could. He could see movement in the ditch — the two M60 heavy machine-gun teams were moving sideways in the ditch — they would offset to each side to hold the flanks of the prison and secure the road.
The sergeant pointed at the wall and went through in a crouched position, holding his 9mm MP5 submachine gun down on its assault sling, ready to sweep the area with gunfire. His high man came through right behind him, looking over the sergeant’s shoulder. The third man came through offset to the right, and the fourth came through backward, looking for anything that might spring up behind them. They rushed across the 110 feet of open quadrangle to the main entrance of the cell block. Another four-man team was right behind them. So far no reaction from the guards.
The team paused to reconfigure. The lead sergeant pushed his submachine gun back onto his shoulder and unclipped a stun grenade from his LBE. The high man drew his pistol and the other two waited. The lead pulled the pin while the high man tested the door. It was unlocked. As he twisted the handle and threw the door open the sergeant tossed in the stun grenade, fell back and drew his Beretta. A flash and bang echoed in the building, and the four men went through, exactly as they had come through the wall.